The RSE-Midlands coding club aims to provide frequent educational and informative presentations or workshops for Research Software Engineers (RSE) or those in RSE adjacent fields. The club will attract speakers primarily from throughout the midlands area to help solidify the RSE Midlands community. We’d love to hear from you about giving a speech or any other coding club queries, if interested please contact Gavin Yearwood g.yearwood@bham.ac.uk.

We also have a mailing list to keep you up to date with RSE Midlands Coding Club events which you can join by following this link.

Become a Coding Club Representative

We are looking for representatives from each of the Midlands Universities to help organise and promote the RSE Midlands Coding Club. If you are interested in becoming a representative please contact Gavin Yearwood g.yearwood@bham.ac.uk.

Upcoming talks

Coding Club talks are due to resume now that the academic year has started, we would love to hear from anyone who wants to present a talk or demo to the club. If you are interested please contact Gavin Yearwood g.yearwood@bham.ac.uk.

Previous talks

Pre-commit: protecting your future self

Date: Monday 3rd July

Time: 16:00 - 17:00

Speaker: Neil Shephard

If you use Git to version control your software development you can automate your work-flow by applying various linting, tests and code checks to your code before making commits using the pre-commit suite of Git Hooks. This talk gives a brief introduction to what Git, linting and tests are and shows how to incorporate pre-commit into your development and Continuous Integration pipelines to help improve the quality of code incorporated into your main codebase.

Presentation: link

What testing taught me

Date: Thursday 22nd June

Time: 11:00 - 12:00

Speaker: Catherine (Cat) Smith

In this talk I will highlight some of the things I learned when I started testing my code, and the code of other people. It is not a tutorial on how to write tests, so is not specific to a particular language. Instead it focusses on the general approach although I will use code examples where relevant. Most of this has been learned by trial and error and I hope that there will be time for others to share alternative approaches, or additional tips in the discussion afterwards.

Presentation: link

Presentation by NCSA

Date: Wednesday June 14th

Time: 15:00 - 17:00

We are delighted that the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign are taking over the RSE Midlands Coding Club in a one-off event not to be missed! Topics will include:

1. Sustaining software/Establishing an Open Source Community, e.g. IN-CORE
2. Research software and data publication - Slides
3. Co-production of software with researchers e.g. IN-CORE or CoverCrop
4. Building and sustaining a team of RSEs

Journeyman Coder : bits to bytes- programs to apps

Date: 15th March

Time: 14:00-15:00

John created his first program in 1978 on a black&white Tandy TRS80 machine, since then he has written numerous programs to complete many routine operational and research meteorology applications. This presentation will cover his experiences coding and the history of coding presented through 4 case studies

Presentation: link

The creation of a regional group

Date: 23rd Feb. 2023

Time: 11:00-12:00

Speaker: Gavin Yearwood

This will be on the creation of a regional group (RSE Midlands) and chairing the first inaugural event last year it will cover my experience and general information on:

• funding
• organising travel
• merchandising
• social media
• advertising

And will provide interactive and advice session at the end to talk to people who have are interested in organising an event or just want to know how events can be created behind the scenes.

Introduction to Docker

Date: 18th Jan. 2023

Time: 14:00-15:00

Speaker: James Tripp

Presentation: Link

Abstract

Docker provides a way to replicate a computing environment. We can then run software within the environment (container) to give us the same result each time, and each container can be generated from a single shareable template (image). In this talk, James will introduce docker, present some practical examples, and open the floor for discussion. Docker is actively used in research and this presentation will hopefully provide an opportunity to explore how this might help you.

Introduction

Date: 23rd Nov. 2022

Time: 14:00-15:00

Speaker: Gavin Yearwood

The first Coding Club event will be held on 23rd November, 14:00-15:00. One of our RSEs, Gavin Yearwood, will be kicking things off and there will be some information about the 2023 RSE Midlands Conference. Keep updated via the rse-midlands website or on Twitter @RSE_Midlands.